French niche line Dear Rose will launch White Song in September. White Song is the second fragrance in the Songs collection that started with Song for a Queen…
Reminiscence Patchouli Blanc ~ new fragrance
Reminiscence will launch Patchouli Blanc in September. The new woody oriental fragrance is a flanker to 1970’s Patchouli fragrance for women…
Diptyque Florabellio ~ fragrance review
In my own perfume collection, certain houses receive more attention during certain seasons of the year. Diptyque happens to be a summer favorite of mine: I’ve worn L’Ombre dans L’Eau every summer since 2003, and I’m also very fond of Eau Rose and Eau de Lierre. Diptyque’s latest release, Florabellio, puzzled me on paper, and I wasn’t able to guess how much I’d like it or what season it would best fit. Florabellio was developed by perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin and features notes of salty sea spray, sea fennel, apple blossom, osmanthus, coffee and toasted sesame.
My sample vial of Florabellio has turned out to be a very suitable fragrance for the earliest days of summer. Diptyque describes Florabellio as “foreign yet familiar…blurring the perspectives between land and sea, flower and fruit, softness and bitterness.” Most of that description makes perfect sense to me…
Three in One: reviews of Annick Goutal L’Ile au The, Salvatore Ferragamo Vendemmia & Acqua di Parma Colonia Ambra
Annick Goutal L’Ile au Thé
Perfumer Isabelle Doyen; fragrance notes include mandarin, citrus, osmanthus, tea, white musk
Annick Goutal just released L’Ile au Thé, a new unisex fragrance inspired by the South Korean island of Jeju. It’s true that Jeju Province produces teas and citrus, but there’s nothing about L’Ile au Thé that couldn’t be attributed to many locales. I could even “inspire” such a fragrance here in the Pacific Northwest, in Seattle, by wearing a classic Eau de Cologne while drinking a cup of fragrant green tea…or sipping my tea next to the blooming Buddha’s hand citrus or kumquat trees in my bedroom. There’s nothing “exotic” about L’Ile au Thé; it fits in perfectly with Annick Goutal’s recent releases: nice fragrances that don’t bare their teeth or muster much emotion beyond a wan smile. (I could almost have used Robin’s review of Vent de Folie as the basis of this review.)
L’Ile au Thé goes on smelling of citrus rind and blossoms; it’s a happy, if quiet, opening.
Atkinsons 1799 Love in Idleness ~ fragrance review
The British perfume house Atkinsons 1799 recently launched Love in Idleness, one of three new fragrances recreated from the company’s archives for its Legendary Collection. Love in Idleness is “a neo-Victorian love philter for those who believe in the magic of fragrance,” developed by perfumer Fabrice Pellegrin. Its composition includes notes of raspberry and violet leaves; violet, orris and heliotrope; and tree moss and patchouli.
This fragrance’s name was one of the factors that lured me into trying it. So poetic, right? It’s another name for the wildflower viola tricolor. And it turns out to be a literary reference, too — in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, love-in-idleness serves as a love potion. As Oberon, king of the fairies, says in Act II, “The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid/Will make or man or woman madly dote/Upon the next live creature that it sees.” Love at first sight…